James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly has given us a (now-sanctioned) small glimpse behind the scenes of Game of Thrones filming in Croatia. The post includes some new photos, including a better one of the Qartheen gate.

In his report, Hibberd tells a fun little story of trying to track down Dany’s dragons.

So I hiked deep into the hills and found another obstacle. A massive, heavily guarded gate. This must be it. But how to get inside?

Left with no choice, I fought and defeated every guard by beating them unconscious with my laptop (I would have taken a photo of this part, but who can battle 20 spear-carrying sentries and take pictures at the same time?).

Beyond the gate — success! There are hordes of Dothraki milling about. I disguised myself in brown rags, kept my head down and wandered the crowd until … I found them.

Winter Is Coming: James promises more reports and photos from the set; can’t wait to see what else he has to reveal!

That’s funny, because when I was reading the books, I always read “Qarth” as “Quarth” (i.e. Kwarth) as well. However, I’m pretty sure it’s just “Karth”, right?

I’m not trying to nitpick here, so don’t get me wrong. Just curious. By any chance, can someone with the audio books give me the official pronunciation? If not, I suppose I’ll soon find out come Spring, one way or another.

so NO CGI dragons AT ALL this season? That’s okay, as long as they let us clearly “see” that they are in those baskets. A little glimpse of a CGI dragon tail or something.
I guess it’ll either be CGI wolves OR CGI dragons every season.

John: I agree. I hope the Unsullied we saw in Season 1 are altered. They really looked bad.

Actually it is said in the books (ASOS, I think) that those Unsullied who were sold in small groups to guard houses in the free cities became decadent and unfit. That’s why the Astaporians began selling them only in groups of 100 or 1000.

Those are Qartheen? They look much more Greek than I imagined (Qarth was always vaguely congruent with India in my imagination). Not a problem at all; I am very excited to see how HBO interprets these new cultures.

The dragon-carrying horse is pretty cool. I can’t wait to see more stellar CGI!

I think House of the Undying is still the ACOK moment I’m most looking forward to. If they don’t include it, I don’t know what I will do with myself.

I am not sure what was cheesy about Unsullied in Season 1. I think they were same as described in the book. As far as i remember – shield, spear, helmet with big spike (i think it was mentioned something about it being a foot tall). I am not sure if they were wearing tunic, armor or nothing in the book. But i think they were allright in the series. The half-nakedness quite fit them, as they are fearless almost as machines.

BTW i am also not sure, why i have someone elses icon when i write a post :-D It is definitely not mine, it is not me on the picture and i never had icon here before and i am not using fb or twitter account. So its mistery :-D

Your take is interesting as well. I’ve always thought of Valyria as Rome. Both are once-powerful empires that have since crumbled. Both have cultures that have defined the Western worlds. Just as Latin was the base for the Romance languages, High Valyrian was the base for the tongues of the Free Cities. Braavos, Pentos and company also all seem like Mediterranean-ish cities whose culture would have been based on Roman (or in their case, Valyrian) culture.

Qarth to me just seemed more Eastern. The colors and riches made me think of all my cultural references for India, and the citizens reminded me of Indian maharajas. And as an added note, Xaro, in my imagination, is basically a bedazzled Ben Kingsley.

I think it’s really interesting how different readers interpret the cultures in vastly different ways. I guess George has given us just enough clues to link his cultures to ones we can reference, but not enough to concretely define any inspiration.